There is something wholly appropriate about Ed Sheeran releasing,"Castle on the Hill" this year. Those of us who grew up in Glen Ellyn, IL, a western suburb of Chicago have always referred to our high school Glenbard West, as the Castle on the Hill, so why not have the song released just in time for our 30 year reunion this past weekend. The school is a beautiful place resembling a European castle somehow placed in the middle of the Chicago suburbs. To an outsider, it may seem a bit out of place, or even odd, however, to us alumni it just looks like home.
Thirty years. That is not a short amount of time, at least by most standards, however, those of us this weekend might argue that point, as in a lot of ways it seems like the blink of an eye. The reality was I was excited to see my friends, but with that excitement came the baggage of being brought up in a family of overweight adults, and me, an overweight child with a long history of bullying and failures in the physical realm. Last to be picked for teams in elementary school and first to be snickered at in gym class when there was little chance I could keep up with my peers. Not this weekend though. I got to go back as an emergency room nurse practitioner who works in two emergency rooms and three urgent cares. I started a motivational health and fitness company this year after finally learning to be healthy, and that seemed to be going well. I was a badass Spartan racer who no longer attracted ridicule for my inability to climb Hernia Hill in junior high. I had run the 20 mile Spartan Beast up and down the mountains of West Virginia just one month ago. Hell, I had successfully resusitated a guy on an airplane two years ago and I even had tattoos. I was hardly the shy, fat girl who lacked any semblance of confidence who emerged from here in 1987.Yet there it was, leading up to the weekend, that emotional space that my brain occupied between the chip on my shoulder of who I had become and the crazy underconfidence of where I come from.
What greeted me this weekend, however, was hardly what I expected. Yes, I loved the time I had with my friends, many of them now my clients, but it was the people I was not friends with growing up who surprised me the most. It would seem the clique lines really no longer existed. Those had died with the fat underconfident girl that I used to be. We were moms, dads, professionals, all successful in our own rights. We had scattered all over the world. However, this weekend we clung to a group of people who so wholeheartedly understood where we all came from in a way outsiders could not totally grasp. We were home.
We drank too much, unleashed the rebellious badasses we had all become at some point of our youth, but have had to tuck away for some time, and enjoyed the escape from our respective day to day adult realities. Old friendships were renewed, and new ones forged between, what we would have thought years ago to be, unlikely matches. We grieved the loss of former classmates who had gone before us and realized just how short life is. We found ourselves so much closer over the course of two days and completely in mourning as it all came to end. We are all now realizing there is absolutely no way we can wait another ten years, opting now for two.
I would spend my morning Sunday before my trip to the airport driving around Glen Ellyn. I became acutely aware of the loss of my mom earlier this summer, and suddenly grateful to her for insisting we grow up here. She must have seen the beauty that I see today all those years ago. Yes, I would find myself listening to Ed Sheeran as it was only fitting, and as I trek it back to upstate New York, all I have to say is until next time Glen Ellyn, take care of the Castle on the Hill as, I can't wait to come home.
